III

In the inner office, among art-l.u.s.tre ware, ink-stained wood, dusty papers, and dirt, Jim Horrocleave banged down a petty-cash book on to Louis' desk. His hat was at the back of his head, and his eyes blazed at Louis, who stood somewhat limply, with a hesitant, foolish, faint smile on his face.

"That's enough!" said Horrocleave fiercely. "I haven't had patience to go all through it. But that's enough. I needn't tell ye I suspected ye last year, but ye put me off. And I was too busy to take the trouble to go into it. However, I've had a fair chance while you've been away." He gave a sneering laugh. "I'll tell ye what put me on to ye again, if you've a mind to know. The weekly expenses went down as soon as ye thought I had suspicions. Ye weren't clever enough to keep 'em up. Well, what have ye got to say for yeself, seeing ye are on yer way to America?"

"I never meant to go to America," said Louis. "Why should I go to America?"

"Ask me another. Then ye confess?"

"I don't," said Louis.

"Oh! Ye don't!" Horrocleave sat down and put his hands on his outstretched knees.

"There may be mistakes in the petty-cash book. I don't say there aren't. Any one who keeps a petty-cash book stands to lose. If he's too busy at the moment to enter up a payment, he may forget it--and there you are! He's out of pocket. Of course," Louis added, with a certain loftiness, "as you're making a fuss about it I'll pay up for anything that's wrong ... whatever the sum is. If you make it out to be a hundred pounds I'll pay up."

Horrocleave growled: "Oh, so ye'll pay up, will ye? And suppose I won't let ye pay up? What shall ye do then?"

Louis, now quite convinced that Horrocleave was only bullying retorted, calmly:

"It's I that ought to ask you that question."

The accuser was exasperated.

"A couple o' years in quod will be about your mark, I'm thinking," he said.

Whereupon Louis was suddenly inspired to answer:

"Yes. And supposing I was to begin to talk about illicit commissions?"

Horrocleave jumped up with such ferocious violence that Louis drew back, startled. The recent Act of Parliament, making a crime of secret commissions to customers' employees, had been a blow to the trade in art-l.u.s.tre ware, and it was no secret in the inner office that Horrocleave, resenting its interference with the natural course of business, had more than once discreetly flouted it, and thus technically transgressed the criminal law. Horrocleave used to defend and justify himself by the use of that word "technical." Louis' polite and unpremeditated threat enraged him to an extreme degree. He was the savage infuriate. He cared for no consequences, even consequences to himself. He hated Louis because Louis was spick and span, and quiet, and because Louis had been palmed off on him by Louis' unscrupulous respectable relatives as an honest man.

"Now thou'st done for thyself!" he cried, in the dialect. "Thou'st done for thyself! And I'll have thee by the heels for embezzlement, and blackmail as well." He waved his arms. "May G.o.d strike me if I give thee any quarter after that! I'll--"

He stopped with open mouth, disturbed by the perception of a highly strange phenomenon beyond the window. He looked and saw Rachel in the yard. For a moment he thought that Louis had planned to use his wife as a shield in the affair if the worst should come to the worst. But Rachel's appearance simultaneously showed him that he was wrong. She was the very mirror of happy confidence. And she seemed so young, and so obviously just married; and so girlish and so womanish at the same time; and her frock was so fresh, and her hat so pert against the heavy disorder of the yard, and her eyes were unconsciously so wistful--that Horrocleave caught his breath. He contrasted Rachel with Mrs. Horrocleave, her complete ant.i.thesis, and at once felt very sorry for himself and very scornful of Mrs. Horrocleave, and melting with worshipful sympathy for Rachel.

"Yer wife's in the yard," he whispered in a different tone.

"My wife!" Louis was gravely alarmed; all his manner altered.

"Hast told her anything of this?"

"I should think I hadn't."

"Ye must pay me, and I'll give ye notice to leave," said Horrocleave, quickly, in a queer, quiet voice. The wrath was driven out of him. The mere apparition of Rachel had saved her husband.

A silence.

Rachel had disappeared. Then there was a distant tapping. Neither of the men spoke nor moved. They could hear the outer door open and light footfalls in the outer office.

"Anybody here?" It was Rachel's voice, timid.

"Come in, come in!" Horrocleave roared.

She entered, blushing, excusing herself, glancing from one to the other, and by her spotless Easter finery emphasizing the squalor of the den.

In a few minutes Horrocleave was saying to Rachel, rather apologetically--

"Louis and I are going to part company, Mrs. Fores. I can't keep him on. His wages are too high for me. It won't run to it. Th' truth is, I'm going to chuck this art business. It doesn't pay. Art, as they call it, 's no good in th' pottery trade."

Rachel said, "So that's what you wanted to see him about on a Sunday morning, is it, Mr. Horrocleave?"

She was a little hurt at the slight on her husband, but the wife in her was persuaded that the loss would be Mr. Horrocleave's.

She foresaw that Louis would now want to use his capital in some commercial undertaking of his own; and she was afraid of the prospect.

Still, it had to be faced, and she would face it. He would probably do well as his own master. During a whole horrible week her judgment on him had been unjustly severe, and she did not mean to fall into the same sin again. She thought with respect of his artistic gifts, which she was too inartistic to appreciate. Yes, the chances were that he would succeed admirably.

She walked him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory good-bye. And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St.

Luke's, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her pa.s.sion stealthily with the sight. True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left to think of others besides.

She hoped that John's Ernest would find a suitable mate. She remembered that she had Julian's curtains to attend to. She continued to think kindly of Thomas Batchgrew, and she chid herself for having thought of him in her distant inexperienced youth, of six months earlier, as _that man_. And, regretting that Mrs. Tams--at her age, too!--could be so foolish, she determined to look after Mrs.

Tams also, if need should arise. But these solicitudes were mere downy trifles floating on the surface of her profound absorption in Louis.

And in the depths of that absorption she felt secure, and her courage laughed at the menace of life (though the notion of braving a church full of people did intimidate the bride). Yet she judged Louis realistically and not sentimentally. She was not conspicuously blind to any aspect of his character; nor had the tremendous revulsion of the previous night transformed him into another and a more heavenly being for her. She admitted frankly to herself that he was not blameless in the dark affair of the bank-notes. She would not deny that in some ways he was untrustworthy, and might be capable of acts of which the consequences were usually terrible. His irresponsibility was notorious. And, being impulsive herself, she had no mercy for his impulsiveness. As for his commonsense, was not her burning of the circular addressed to Mrs. Maldon a sufficient commentary on it?

She was well aware that Louis' sins of omission and commission might violently shock people of a certain temperament--people of her own temperament in particular. These people, however, would fail to see the other side of Louis. If she herself had merely heard of Louis, instead of knowing him, she would probably have set him down as undesirable. But she knew him. His good qualities seemed to her to overwhelm the others. His charm, his elegance, his affectionateness, his nice speech, his courtesy, his quick wit, his worldliness--she really considered it extraordinary that a plain, blunt girl, such as she, should have had the luck to please him. It was indeed almost miraculous.

If he had faults--and he had--she preferred them (proudly and pa.s.sionately) to the faults of scores of other women's husbands. He was not a brute, nor even a boor nor a savage--thousands of savages ranged free and terror-striking in the Five Towns. Even when vexed and furious he could control himself. It was possible to share his daily life and see him in all his social moods without being humiliated. He was not a clodhopper; watch him from the bow-window of a morning as he walked down the street! He did not drink; he was not a beast. He was not mean. He might scatter money, but he was not mean. In fact, except that one sinister streak in his nature, she could detect no fault.

There was danger in that streak.... Well, there was danger in every man. She would accept it; she would watch it. Had she not long since reconciled herself to the prospect of an everlasting vigil?

She did not care what any one said, and she did not care! He was the man she wanted; the whole rest of the world was nothing in comparison to him. He was irresistible. She had wanted him, and she would always want him, as he was. She had won him and she would keep him, as he was, whatever the future might hold. The past was the past; the opening chapter of her marriage was definitely finished and its drama done. She was ready for the future. One tragedy alone could overthrow her--Louis' death. She simply could not and would not conceive existence without him. She would face anything but that.... Besides, he was not _really_ untrustworthy--only weak! She faltered and recovered. "He's mine and I wouldn't have him altered for the world. I don't want him perfect. If anything goes wrong, well, let it go wrong!

I'm his wife. I'm his!" And as, slightly raising her confident chin in the street, she thus undertook to pay the price of love, there was something divine about Rachel's face.